CHINA S FLOODS IN 2010: A STRESS TEST FOR STATE CAPACITY CHEN Gang EAI Background Brief No. 553 Date of Publication: 20 August 2010
Executive Summary 1. China has been stricken by a string of natural catastrophes in 2010. Flooding from torrential rains since May, which has plagued 28 provinces with about 4,000 people dead or missing, is the worst China has suffered in more than a decade. 2. China has put in place an effective crisis management system to cope with natural calamities. It has the enhanced state capacity as well as sufficient equipment and resources to reduce losses and casualties to tolerable levels. 3. Like its crisis management in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, the Chinese government responded to the floods quickly by mobilizing millions for rescue work and flood discharge. State media provided round-the-clock coverage. 4. The two summer floods in 1998 and 2010 share some similarities: most downpours were concentrated along the Yangtze River; abnormal weathers were associated with the La Niña phenomenon; and heavy rainfalls were later reported in other parts of China. 5. The floods did raise environmental concerns about overdevelopment problems such as fast-paced urbanization, deforestation and controversial large-scale hydropower projects. 6. A large part of the casualties in the floods were caused by mudslides from loose and weathered terrains related to sustained drought, deforestation and soil erosion. 7. Neither agricultural nor industrial production has been much affected by the flooding. It is unlikely for the summer floods to knock GDP growth off the eight-percent target. i
8. Natural disasters, especially meteorological ones such as droughts, floods and storms, have become more frequent and severe since the 1990s and the trend is likely to continue in China. 9. Floods and droughts have always been part of China s history so much so that a German-American historian Karl Wittfogel dubbed China a kind of hydraulic civilization. 10. Thanks to efforts in improving flood-control facilities and warning/forecasting systems, from 1998 to 2008, total areas affected by floods in China had been greatly reduced. ii
CHINA S FLOODS IN 2010: A STRESS TEST FOR STATE CAPACITY CHEN Gang * Mighty State Capacity versus Deadliest Floods in a Decade 1.1 China has been stricken by a string of natural catastrophes in 2010 including an unprecedented half-year drought that plagued the normally lush and humid region of southwestern China and the most devastating floods and mudslides in a decade. After 30 years of development, the country has strengthened its state capacity in managing such disasters caused by extreme climatic conditions. 1.2 Flooding from torrential summer rains since May 2010, which has plagued 28 provinces with about 4,000 people dead or missing, is the worst China has suffered in more than a decade. Among 230 rivers whose water levels were beyond warning points, the Yangtze River, Hanjiang River and the Songhua River attracted the most attention from flood controllers. Massive mudslides reported in remote mountainous areas deepened China s flood woes, with over 1,300 reportedly killed by the avalanche of mud and rocks in western Gansu and Sichuan Province. 1 1.3 Fearing a repeat of the disastrous flooding of 1998, the heaviest since 1954 that had led to a series of levee collapses and killed more than 4,150 people, 2 the government has made strenuous effort to improve flood-control facilities * Dr Chen Gang is Research Fellow at the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore. The author would like to thank Professor Zheng Yongnian and Professor John Wong for their valuable comments and contributions. The author would also like to thank Mr. Qian Jiwei for preparing the appendix. 1 For the map of major flood-hit provinces, please refer to the appendix. 2 For details of the 1998 flooding in China, please refer to John Wong, Explaining China s Floods, EAI Background Brief No. 21, 7 September 1998. 1
in the past decade. China has put in place a specific bureaucracy to cope with severe floods and droughts, with an inter-agency organization called the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters ( 国家防汛抗旱总指挥部 ) designated to oversee and coordinate related authorities like the Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Civil Affairs, Ministry of Agriculture and China Meteorological Administration. 3 Usually a Vice- Premier is appointed to head the Headquarters. 1.4 The two floods in 1998 and 2010 share many similarities: most of the torrential downpours were concentrated in the areas along the Yangtze River ( 长江 ), the world s third longest, from June to August; abnormal weathers were associated with the so-called La Niña phenomenon; heavy rainfalls spread to other parts of China and caused flooding along other rivers such as the Huai, Yellow and Songhua; and the scale of flooding alarmed the leadership into mobilizing millions of people to battle the floods. 1.5 Like its crisis management of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, the Chinese government responded to the floods quickly and with uncharacteristic openness. People saw on television, the Premier or Vice Premier coordinating flood-control and rescue work in disaster-ravaged regions, and the mobilization of numerous soldiers and local people to shore up the dykes and deliver food and water to the homeless. In sharp contrast to neighboring Pakistan s sluggish action towards the floods in which millions languished in disease and famine due to the lack of food and drinking water, China s prompt deployment of rescue troops and round-the-clock media coverage gained it many public relations kudos. 3 Vice Premier Hui Liangyu is now President of the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, which coordinates anti-floods and drought relief work at the Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Civil Affairs, Ministry of Land and Resources, Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Health, China Meteorological Administration, Ministry of Railway, Ministry of Commerce, State Administration of Radio Film and Television, National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and State Administration of Work Safety. For relevant information, please refer to http://fxkh.mwr.gov.cn. 2
1.6 As a continental state frequently struck by natural calamities, China now has the enhanced state capacity as well as sufficient equipment and resources to keep losses and casualties at tolerable levels. Today neither flood nor drought would bring about food shortages in the highly industrialized People s Republic because of developed food storage facilities and modern transportation systems. 1.7 However, the floods did raise environmental concerns about overdevelopment issues, including fast-paced urbanization, deforestation and controversial large-scale hydropower projects. During the floods, big cities like Guangzhou, Zhengzhou and Chongqing were water-logged due to the lack of effective urban drainage systems. Chinese officials generally ignore underground public infrastructure and are obsessed with grand construction projects above ground, which may take up too much land for rainwater to be absorbed or run off. 1.8 Frequent deadly mudslides point to the grim costs of deforestation in ecologically fragile regions. A large number of the casualties in the 2010 floods were caused by mudslides from loose and weathered terrains hit by sustained drought and soil erosion. After the rain-triggered mudslides swept Zhouqu County in northwest Gansu Province and took at least 1,200 lives, a day-long suspension of public entertainment nationwide was enforced to express condolences for the victims and families. According to environmentalist Wen Bo, a senior fellow with U.S.-based Pacific Environment, the flooding that led to the Zhouqu mudslide disaster is certainly resulting from decades of deforestation in the headwater region of the Bailong river. 4 1.9 Neither agricultural nor industrial production has been affected much by the flooding. The summer crop is relatively not that important as China s grain 4 Mudslide Toll Rises as Beijing Mobilizes, The Wall Street Journal, 10 August 2010, http:// online.wsj.com/article/na_wsj_pub:sb10001424052748703435104575421170100705034. html 3
production depends heavily, up to 70%, on autumn and winter crops. 5 More importantly, the rice-growing east and southeast China like Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces has experienced less flooding, and major industrial hubs such as the Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta and (Beijing-Tianjin) Bohai Economic Rim have not been affected by the floods. 1.10 Natural disasters, especially meteorological ones such as droughts, floods and storms, have become more frequent and severe since the 1990s and the trend is likely to continue in China. The perceived rise in extreme weather events in China coincided with a global trend of increasing weather-related disasters. Flood Control in the Hydraulic Civilization 2.1 Floods and droughts are very much a part of China s rural life and, in fact, part of China s history, 6 so much so that an eminent German-American historian Karl Wittfogel dubbed China as a kind of hydraulic civilization. 7 China s oldest dynasty, the Xia, was founded by Da Yu ( 大禹 ), a hero who successfully regulated the flood and taught the people how to tame China s rivers and lakes. 2.2 In such a hydraulic civilization, flood control has always been a life or death issue for each dynasty, which had to set aside the bulk of the country s material and human resources to building water conservation works in preparation of deadly floods. Neglect of such public works duties on the part of the emperor would cause floods, famine, peasant rebellion, and finally, the demise of the imperial regime. 5 p. 11 6 John Wong, Explaining China s Floods, EAI Background Brief No. 21, 7 September 1998, Ibid, p. 6 7 According to Karl A. Wittfogel, hydraulic civilization refers to any culture having an agricultural system that is dependent upon large-scale government-managed waterworks productive (for irrigation) and protective (for flood control). In his book Oriental Despotism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), Wittfogel believed that such civilizations in the Orient were quite different from those of the West. 4
2.3 China claims that it suffers from the most number of natural disasters of all countries in the world due to its unique geographical and climatic features. More than 70 percent of Chinese cities and more than 50 percent of the Chinese population are located in areas vulnerable to serious earthquakes, or meteorological, geological or marine disasters. 8 2.4 Of all types of natural disasters, meteorological disasters mainly caused by its monsoon climate are the most frequent. China s major river basins are well within the monsoon zone of the Pacific, with over 50% of annual precipitation in most areas and concentrated in the four months of June to September. Sometimes more than 70% of regional rainfalls are concentrated in the two months of July and August. While two-thirds of China's land is threatened by floods and tropical typhoons ravaging coastal areas seven times a year on average, hinterland droughts occur almost every year in the dry seasons. 2.5 In China s history, the Yellow River and the Huai River were most notorious for their catastrophic flooding that drowned millions of people and inundated numerous houses in some years. The Yellow River, known both as Cradle of Chinese civilization and China s sorrow, has burst its banks more than 1,600 times since 602 BC and changed its courses 26 times. In modern times since it first dried up in 1972, however, the Yellow River has become much more facile due to the low volume in its lower reaches caused by increased agricultural irrigation. 2.6 Since the People s Republic of China was founded in 1949, the Yangtze River has received the most attention from flood controllers due to the increasing frequency of inundations particularly in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. In the first decade of the CCP ruling, two major floods occurred in the Yangtze Basin in 1954 and 1956. The 1954 Yangtze River floods that occurred mostly in central Hubei hit a historical high of 44.67 m in Jingzhou city and killed about 33,000 people. A comparable one is the 1998 Yangtze 8 Information Office of the PRC State Council: China's Actions for Disaster Prevention and Reduction, May 2009, http://www.bjreview.com.cn/special/human_rights_action_plan_2009-2010/2009-05/17/content_232383.htm 5
River floods, which resulted in 4,150 dead, 15 million homeless and US$26 billion in economic loss. 2.7 Some experts attribute the severity of Yangtze River floods in the modern days to improper human activities in the river valley where one third of China s total population now lives. The following factors have been singled out for public attention: destruction of vegetation has led to soil erosion in the upper reaches; land reclamation and siltation has reduced lake sizes, which resulted in a decrease in flood storage capacity; and construction of levees has caused flood levels to rise due to restricted flood discharge capacity. 9 2.8 Devastating floods have justified the Chinese communists establishment of new dams such as the gigantic Gezhouba Dam and the Three Gorges Dam in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. Regarded as a solution to flooding and energy shortage, the building of hydroelectric dams and reservoirs has gradually become commonplace after 1950 and today China has more than 20,000 dams over 15 meters high, making it the country with the most number of dams in the world. 10 In his poem Swimming (1956), Chairman Mao Zedong envisioned future dam construction on the Yangtze as to hold back Wushan s clouds and rain till a smooth lake rises in the narrow gorges; the mountain goddess if she is still there, will marvel at a world so changed. 2.9 During Mao s time, besides building massive dams, millions of peasants were mobilized to construct small and medium water conservation works, with very little capital investment and primarily by extremely labour-intensive methods. Such efforts over the years had the cumulative effect of alleviating floods through the 1960s and 1970s. 9 Hongfu Yin and Changan Li: Human Impact on Floods and Flood Disasters on the Yangtze River, Geomorphology, Volume 41, Issues 2-3, 15 November 2001, pp. 105-109 10 Only 23 large and medium scale dams and reservoirs existed in China before 1949. See Jerry Owen: The Water Page: Yangtze River, http://www.africanwater.org/yangtze.htm 6
2.10 During Deng Xiaoping s time when China speeded up its marketization and industrialization process, the state followed a blatantly urban-biased development strategy with most resources diverted to glamorous industrial and urban projects instead of water conservancy and forestation projects. In the single-minded pursuit of high economic growth, China has to bear with the inestimable environmental costs of soil erosion and deforestation that exacerbated the floods. Figure 1 shows that areas affected by floods had been on the rise in the years 1978 to 1998. 16000 14000 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 FIGURE 1 AREAS AFFECTED BY FLOODS IN CHINA (1,000 hectares) 0 1978 1980 1985 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2.11 The 1998 Yangtze River floods made the leadership realize the consequences of neglecting water conservancy and environmental issues. Strenuous efforts have been made in building up flood-control facilities and related warning/forecasting systems. Substantial fund has been generated both from central and local governments for the reinforcement of levees and for building the flood storage and detention basins. It was reported that for the four provinces in the middle stream and downstream of the Yangtze River, 870,000 people had been resettled, with 1/3 to 1/2 of polders located in lake shore areas before the 1999 flood season, which resulted in safe flood discharge of 1999 in 7
the middle stream of the Yangtze River compared with the situation in 1998. 11 From 1998 to 2008, total areas affected by floods in China were greatly reduced (Figure 1). Economic Losses 3.1 Neither agricultural nor industrial production has been much affected by the flooding. The summer crop is not as important to China as its grain production depends heavily, up to 70%, on autumn and winter crops. More importantly, the rice growing east and southeast China like Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces has experienced less flooding, and major industrial hubs such as the Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta and Bohai Bay Economic Rim have not been affected by the floods. 3.2 In ancient China, floods often preceded famines, epidemics and other rural misery like population displacement. But for the current floods, just like the 1998 Yangtze River floods, they are unlikely to cause nationwide food scarcity despite heavy casualties and huge economic losses. 3.3 According to Lu Bu, a researcher from the Institute of Agriculture Resources and Regional Planning at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the foreseeable grain loss of one to two percent is very minimal compared with the total grain yield of the country. 12 Of the total affected area of about 570,000 hectares of crops, only about 60,600 hectares faced total crop failure. The National Bureau of Statistics said that the total grain yield of China s three main crops rice, wheat and corn was 470.27 million tons in 2008, and only 17.29 percent of which came from the disaster-stricken areas. 3.4 Since the majority of the country s farmlands are located on dry land and heavy rain means good news for the crops, the whole country usually has a 11 Zhang Hai-lun, China: Flood Management, case study for WMO (World Meteorological Organization)/GWP (Global Water Partnership) Associated Programme on Flood Management, p. 7 http://www.apfm.info/pdf/case_studies/cs_china.pdf 12 Expert Predicts Slight Drop in Grain Output, China Daily, 8 July 2010 8
good harvest when the south is waterlogged. For instance, when the summer floods hit most provinces in 1998, the total grain yield reached 512.3 million tons, a record high for the next nine years. 3.5 Often, summer floods come at a time when most of the summer crops have already been harvested. In 2010, China has already had a good harvest of summer grain crops, 13 although a prolonged drought instead of floods may cause a significant agricultural loss for Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi. Hence the summer floods are not expected to cause a serious decline in China s overall food production, which may be more vulnerable to severe droughts instead. 3.6 China has reaped bumper harvests for six consecutive years since 2004, with grain output hitting a record high of 530.8 million tons in 2009. Although the adverse weather this time may prevent the country from achieving its grain production growth, it should not be a difficult job to fulfill China s 500- million-ton grain-output target set by the government in early 2010. To ensure that the world s most populous nation has adequate supplies, the Chinese government has demanded stockpiles of about 40 percent of annual consumption for grain security. 3.7 Floods and droughts alone will not make China more dependent upon imported grains. The total wheat output in China, the world s biggest wheat grower, is likely to hit 115 million tons in 2010, the seventh consecutive year to register a growth since 2003. 3.8 Economically, by 4 August, the floods had resulted in direct economic losses of 209.6 billion yuan (US$31 billion), according to figures from the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters. 14 The figure only accounted for about 0.6% of China s GDP totaling US$4.9 trillion in 2009. 13 It is estimated that the total yield for summer grain crops will reach over 123 million tons in 2010, almost the same as 2009. 14 Floods Kill 1,072 this Year in China but Repeat of 1998 Catastrophe not Likely, Xinhua News, 4 August 2010 9
3.9 Despite significant economic losses in farm production, shipping, manufacture and retail businesses, floods usually will stimulate, in their aftermath, a whole range of fresh economic activities from infrastructural development, rebuilding of houses and other related consuming spending, which will boost China s final GDP growth. 15 3.10 Since China s economy expanded by 11.1 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2010, well beyond the eight percent goal set by the government for 2010, it is unlikely for the summer floods to knock the growth rate off the target. Against the backdrop of tightened macro-control policy ( 宏观调控政策 ), even the slight slowdown of the GDP growth is in line with the policymakers objective of controlling inflation and bringing overheating investment to a more sustainable level. Controversies over the Three Gorges Dam 4.1 Officials claimed that lessons learned from 1998, and the 2006 completion of the Three Gorges Dam which was built partly for flood control could prevent such a recurrence. 16 Year 2010 witnessed the first major flood test faced by the controversial Three Gorges dam after its full operation. 4.2 One and a half miles wide and 610 feet tall, the massive Three Gorges Dam is China s largest construction project since the Great Wall. According to the state media, the rain on 20 July 2010 increased the peak flow in the Three Gorges reservoir to around 70,000 cubic meters per second, considerably higher than the 50,000 figure recorded in 1998. 17 4.3 Since the peak flow did not exceed the designed capacity of 100,000 cubic meters of water per second, the dam successfully withstood its first major 15 p. 12 16 17 John WONG, Explaining China s Floods, EAI Background Brief No. 21, 7 September 1998, China Floods Deadliest in a Decade, AFP News, 21 July 2010 China's Three Gorges Dam Withstands Peak Flood Test, Xinhua News, 20 July 2010 10
flood test. Flood control is one of the major objectives of the massive dam, which was pushed through by the government despite environmental and social concerns. 4.4 But what would happen to the dam if the peak flow exceeds 100,000 cubic meters a second? The floods in 2010 raised questions about just how big a flood the massive Three Gorges Dam could withstand. China s media is aflutter with the discussion because one of the primary justifications for building the world's biggest dam was to control deadly seasonal flooding along the Yangtze River. 4.5 Even China Daily, the state-run English-language newspaper, quoted Cao Guangjing, chairman of the China Three Gorges Corp, as saying that any flood with water flow exceeding 122,000 cubic meters per second would put the dam s own safety at risk, implying that the dam s flood-control capacity is not unlimited. 18 4.6 The government announced in 2003 that the dam was designed to withstand the worst flood in 10,000 years The target however had been watered down to the worst flood in 1,000 years in 2007, and subsequently the worst flood in 100 years in 2008. 19 4.7 In 2010 dams and levees along major rivers ( 大江大河 ) like the Yangtze River and Huai River all withstood the torrents while those poorly maintained flood control facilities along small and medium-sized rivers have suffered huge losses. In contrast to the central government s huge investment in water conservation works along major rivers, local governments, especially those in northern China, have failed to pay enough attention to flood-control infrastructure along tributaries. 18 Gorges Dam's Flood Capacity Limited, China Daily, 23 July 2010, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-07/23/content_11038374.htm 19 China's Dam Inconsistency, China Realtime Report, 26 July 2010, http://chinese.wsj.com/gb/20100726/ren160302_enversion.shtml 11
Rising from Calamities? 5.1 During his visit to an earthquake-hit middle school in Sichuan Province in 2008, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao wrote rising from calamities ( 多难兴邦, or tribulations rejuvenate a nation ) on the chalkboard. The government has admitted that a rising China is facing an increase in natural disasters which may threaten crops and economic growth. 5.2 Natural disasters, especially meteorological ones such as droughts, floods and storms, have become more frequent and severe since the 1990s and the trend is likely to continue, according to He Lifu, the top weather forecaster of the National Meteorological Centre in Beijing. 20 He said his agency responded to 16 emergencies in 2009, the most since its foundation in 1949, attributing the increase of extreme weathers to the instability of the atmosphere, and global warming. 5.3 China admitted in its National Climate Change Programme that drought in northern and northeastern China, and flood in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and southeastern China have become more severe. 21 The annual precipitation in most years since 1990 has been larger than normal, with more frequent floods reported in the south and droughts in the north. 5.4 Figures from the Ministry of Civil Affairs showed that the annual economic loss caused by extreme weathers had grown from 176.2 billion yuan on average in the 1990s to 244 billion yuan between 2004 and 2008. The State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters also warned that droughts have become more frequent since the 1990s. The Headquarters figures show that annual grain loss caused by droughts has averaged 37.28 million tonnes 20 Droughts and Floods Threaten China's Economic Growth, Forecaster Warns, The Guardian, 30 June 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/30/china-climate-change-warning 21 NDRC: China s National Climate Change Programme (2007), http://www.ccchina.gov.cn/ WebSite/CCChina/UpFile/File188.pdf, p. 5 12
since 2000 almost twice the level in the 1980s while the annual average proportion of damaged crops has jumped to 59.3% from 48% in the 1990s. 22 5.5 The perceived rise in extreme weather events in China coincided with the global trend toward increasing weather-related disasters. According to the International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) and Red Crescent Societies, during the ten years from 1999 to 2008, years 2004 and 2008 witnessed the most number of casualties by natural disasters 241,635 and 235,736 respectively. 23 The IFRC said that a rise in weather-related disasters worldwide over the last decade from around 200 a year in the 1990s to around 350 is continuing. 5.6 In the past three years, China has been stricken by a string of natural catastrophes including a rare spring snowstorm that caused a nationwide transport chaos (2008), a giant earthquake that took as many as 68,000 lives (2008), an unprecedented half-year drought that plagued the normally lush and humid region of southwestern China (2009-2010) and the most devastating floods in a decade (2010). 5.7 Just like in any other previous flood fighting, the state media has consistently played up the heroic role of the People s Liberation Army (PLA) in places from Hubei to Jilin. In mobilizing millions of civilians and soldiers to battle the floods, the Party has successfully impressed on the people that it has made all-out efforts to deal with the disaster. 5.8 The floods can be considered a timely wake-up call for the top leadership on the need to pay more attention to the development of urban flood-control systems that have lagged behind the expansion of urban areas and urban population growth, and the anti-flood infrastructure construction along lesser tributaries. During the floods, big cities like Guangzhou, Zhengzhou and 22 Weather Disasters may Rise, China Daily, 30 June 2009, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2009-06/30/content_8335146.htm 23 International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies: World Disasters Report 2009, p. 167 13
Chongqing were blamed for their lack of effective urban drainage systems to prevent water logging. As Chinese officials are obsessed with grand construction projects above ground, they sometimes ignore the urban underground public infrastructure. 5.9 Although major rivers have been well dredged since the 1998 floods, water resource projects along China's small and medium-sized rivers have relatively weak flood control capabilities, which resulted in huge losses during the current summer floods. The central government has planned to intensify investment in water conservancy projects, especially in harnessing small and medium-sized rivers, preventing and controlling mountain torrents and reinforcing local reservoirs. 24 24 Chinese Leaders Stress Safety in Flood Relief Work, Xinhua News, 2 August 2010 14
APPENDIX CHINA S MAJOR FLOOD-HIT PROVINCES IN 2010 黑龙江 吉林 新疆 甘肃 内蒙古 辽宁 青海 宁夏 山西 河北 山东 北京 西藏 四川 陕西 河南湖北 江苏安徽 上海 云南 贵州广西 湖南江西广东 浙江福建 台湾 海南 Zhouqu County, Gansu Province (death toll in the massive mudslide rose to 1,270 as of 17 August 2010, with 474 missing) Compiled by Qian Jiwei, EAI Research Assistant 15